Purple Flames
by alwaysflying
Summary: It's amazing what a few drinks can do to a person's sense of honesty.


We are gathered in the living room, the two of us. It was a habit of ours, all of us, once, to wait until Maureen and April were out, then bring out the pot and booze. We would get high and ask one another inane questions, wanting to know details about our first times and those frustrating times when we were almost, almost there.

After a while, we stopped. It was when we found April dead in the bathtub, when Benny moved out, when Maureen moved in with Joanne and Collins was just gone – somewhere, in Massachusetts or somewhere entirely off the map. It was just Roger and me, after that, just the two of us – not enough people to get high together or play any drinking-and-smoking game. The only games we played after that were games of our words. _Roger, take your AZT. Mark, go fuck yourself or get a girlfriend_.

After those days were what we would call the golden age. It sounds cheesy, but it was. Those were the days of strip poker with Angel, Collins, Maureen and Mimi, truth or dare and drunken kissing games we wouldn't remember in the morning. Mimi's downstairs neighbor moved away around that time and left a battered television on the steps between our apartment and Mimi's. We didn't need it. We had each other.

And we still do. Even with the way our friends have been dropping like flies lately – April, Angel, Mimi – we still have each other. There are five of us, still, and a hesitant Benny who still feels obligated to drop by once in a while. We appreciate it, even if we taunt him about having married Alison. She isn't that bad, either. She invites us to dinner sometimes, having been charmed by Roger after formally meeting him for the first time.

Tonight, Roger and I are by ourselves. Collins and Maureen are out drinking in honor of nothing in particular. Joanne, who we invited over to be polite and who has seemed increasingly frustrated over the past few weeks, appreciated the offer to spend time with us but declined on the grounds that she has work to do. ("She always _does_," sneered Maureen when she heard. Roger then made a remark about how in the same way that Joanne always has work to do, Maureen always has people to screw.) And of course, inviting Benny was the last thing on our minds.

So what else did we have to do? We brought out a few bottles of beer, claimed spots on the couch, and initiated a conversation. We reminisced, talking about the days of unlimited pot (because, well, Collins lived with us) and those five months before, during and after Benny's wedding when the Greys apparently forgot that we had rent to pay.

Now we're done reminiscing. We're done talking, and we're exhausted and not even halfway drunk yet. We want to be drunk. We gulp quickly and feign intoxication in our eyes and the motion of our hands. We tap our feet against the ground and lean our heads against the wall behind us, behind the couch, behind our exceptionally limited universe. This is our world, this rectangle around the couch and our bodies, the booze and our feet, propped up on the table in front of us.

"Do you remember," I ask, "when we used to play the question game?"

I expect, at first, that I will have to explain and go into more details as to what I mean, what question game. But, surprising me, Roger seems to know what I am talking about. He responds evenly, his voice far too clear and steady for him to be drunk, "Is that what you want to do?"

It's intoxicating, the question game. It is what makes us feel like we are far drunker than we are, making us toss our heads back and cackle at one another's misfortunes. It is a bizarre demonstration of schadenfreude, a jumbled mess of delight at the fact that, well, "better you than me." We laugh at the horror stories of each other's first sexual encounters, giggle giddily at the tales of That Girl He Thought Had A Crush On Him, and sit in a stiff silence at the all-too infrequent tales with real meaning behind them. We are not here to listen to sad or angry stories. We want humor, we want to feel better about ourselves in that worse things have happened to others.

I want to hear Roger talk about that time he fucked some girl who, later, threatened to report him for the rape crime he did not commit. I want to hear him lace humor into every story he tells, no matter how angry or tragic. I don't want to have to _answer _anything. But that is how the game works. He amuses me, I amuse him. The whole thing is an endless cycle of entertainment – endless, that is, until one or both of us passes out from inebriation and ends up spending the night on the couch. Usually, it's Roger. Tonight, it may be me, because I am drinking more than I normally do, and god, I just want to relax now.

And it's Roger's turn to ask me a question, which I hate. I don't want to answer anything, because I don't have the gift that he has for making everything seem funny and crazy and oh-my-god-I'm-so-glad-it-wasn't-me. Maybe he looks upon his past woes with a sort of detachment I cannot muster, because anything he might ask me about likely was not captured on film, or else he would already know about it. My views of my past traumas are sharply biased in my favor; I am a martyr in every tale I tell, and always, my stories are somber and depressing. I can tell Roger hates this, and he wants to hear from Collins. But he has to settle for me, so he needs to ask the questions that are likely to lead to the most humiliating, entertaining (for him) answers.

"So," he says, his tone loose and light and relaxed. "Tell me about… tell me about the first time you realized the world isn't perfect."

And my eyes widen, because this is abstract. It takes thought, and Roger usually calls upon the most glaringly obvious memories. My first failed sexual experience, my first successful one – four years apart, if anyone cares to know. But never, never does Roger ask me about things that might actually be meaningful, interesting, or somewhat artistic. He's never seemed to care about _that _before. He wants to make fun of me and feel better about himself. I know his game. So why does he ask me _this_?

Whatever the reason, I am obligated to answer. I know the story, actually. I know it off the top of my head. And while the question is random and bizarre, so was the situation itself.

So I answer, and I tell him. He asked for it.

"It was when I found myself in love with my best friend," I tell him bluntly. "And he was straight. And dating someone."

"Me?" asks Roger, but I know he knows it isn't him, wasn't him. Well… it was. But that's a story for another day, and it isn't the answer to the question. He asked for when I _found out _about the imperfections of the world. When I fell in love with Roger, well, that was just reinforcing it.

I shake my head anyway. "No, not you," I say, and I make my tone condescending, as though calling him stupid for even having asked. I sigh as though I am trying to remember his name, the name of this friend who so plagues my thoughts.

"I don't know his name," I say at last. I do, but that doesn't matter. It isn't important. Roger doesn't know him, and besides, I prefer not to have a name to a face. I want to think of him as inhuman, just a passing shadow that slithered through my life. "Well, what happened was that he had this girlfriend. Don't remember her name either, actually." That part, at least, is true. I doubt I ever even knew her name to begin with. I know I never cared. "And… she was a bitch. You know the stories, it's a cliché. She figured it out, and she milked it for all it was worth. She'd see me staring at him and she'd start kissing him like crazy. She'd wait until I was sleeping over at his house, throw rocks at his window, climb in and have sex. I'd sleep on the couch in the living room and fumble for excuses in the morning, trying to explain the situation to his mom without getting anyone in trouble."

Roger looks almost sympathetic. Actually, he looks drunk. He isn't, but by now it isn't too far off. He certainly looks the part of the drunken half-amused roommate who never had to experience this kind of trauma.

"Anyway, she took me aside one day and started bitching about how I was taking up all his time. Said how just because I was a faggot" – I wince, having always hated that word with a passion – "that didn't mean I had the right to monopolize people's boyfriends. And she totally went nuts on me, screaming it over and over again. Faggot. Faggot. Faggot." And now I'm sure of it, Roger definitely looks pitying.

I chuckle hoarsely, breaking up the story by asking, "Bet this never happened to _you_, huh, rock god?" Before he can answer and embarrass both of us, I continue. "Anyways, he heard. And… well, he thought it was pretty fucking sick, and told me to get the hell out of his house and not to talk to him again. That was it."

"And that," I conclude, because a life-alterning story like that one always requires a conclusion, "was how I figured out that the world wasn't perfect."

Roger exhales. He kicks the table out, stands up, and goes to his room. "'Night," he calls, and the whole thing is inexplicable. I hear the squeal of his mattress as he collapses against it, and the light flickers before dying entirely. It is all a single movement, the time frame of one second managing to incorporate all of these tiny things.

I do it too. I steadily walk to my room and fall into a deep, untroubled sleep. While my dreams are harsh and unpleasant, I wake up feeling fully relaxed and serene. I have never done this before, never poured out my heart and soul to a single person in a single evening. And now, all the evidence that I ever did it at all are the beer bottles still adorning the couch and table. In a single, smooth movement, I sweep the bottles into my arms and into the garbage can.

Everything is perfect now, untouched by any outside features.

I pour hot water into the tea kettle and let my imagination run wild as I imagine the entire apartment engulfed in the oven's purple flames.


End file.
